Mrs. Garretts Groovy Kindergarten

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

I am so excited to have one more chance to get some great deals at TPT. They are having a ONE DAY BOOST sale all day today! I am putting my entire store on sale so you can get 28% off everything! Woohoo! I've got my cart filled with clipart and some of Deedee Wills Bundles! Great Stuff! Click on the button to go check it out! Remember to enter BOOST at checkout!

Here are some of my favorite things from my store! Click on the pictures to get these products!

Friday, August 1, 2014

I absolutely love Fridays. One of the great things I look forward to is Five for Friday. It just gets me a little more focused and I it helps me to think about blessing and fun things from my week.

1. This week on Monday, my friend Dani and I went to A Dirty Dancing Quote A Long this week at a theatre downtown. Oh my gosh, can I just say it was so much fun! There was great food, etc.. but also props such as poppers, balloons, Patrick Swayze fans, and maracas. We were given some instructions to sing along with our favorites and quote when prompted. Boo when Robbie showed up (I never liked him) and swoon when Patrick showed up. It was some of the most fun that I have had in a long time. I will say it was a bit more risqué for the time than I remembered. LOL Here is a great pic of me and my "date" for the evening.

Here are a few pics of my classroom. This is where the majority of my time has been spent the last few weeks. I have been moving to a new much larger room.

I love my teacher table - I have not really every sewed before but made this really cute table skirt. The other thing that I was really excited about is my Word Wall magnet board. It turned out so great! It is 3 24X48 pieces of sheet metal screwed into this bulletin board close to the floor. The thing I am going to love most about it is that my students will be able to interact and use the Word Wall independently. Woohoo!

These are just a few shots of my classroom library. Just a portion of it! As I said last week, I have a bit of a book problem! I just love great children's literature! There is so much!

If you like the Class Decor used here, it is part of my Funky Super Star Classroom Decor. You can check it out here!

This caused me to decide to switch up my decor. I create this gem of classroom decor and I really like the way it is turning out. You can check out this Funky Super Star Class Decor in my TPT store.

Wow! My Pete the Cat items in my TPT store have taken off again. I get it so much. He is one of my very favorite characters to start the year off with. I wanted to share some of these products with you. First of all, I have two different Pete Classroom decor sets - one in chevron and one in primary colors. Some of the items included in these sets (they do vary so read the descriptions carefully), are a Number Line including ten frames, 2D/3D posters, Pete's shoes desk plates, Pete Cubbie Tags, Classroom Behavior Clip Chart, Daily 5 Signs, Bulletin Board Pieces, To Do List sheet, A Calendar Set, Word Wall Header and Word Wall Alphabet Cards, Daily Schedule, Birthday Board and Table Signs. All of these with cute Pete decor. I have heard so much positive feedback. I have 31 different Pete products available (some are bundled) but be sure to check them out and there are some great FREEBIES too! Click the pictures!

Another of my favorite Pete products (and my bestseller) is my Pete the Cat - Is It A Letter, Word or Sentence sort? This is a great activity to use whole, group or with a small group time, for word work or for a literacy station. This is a true favorite of mine.

This evening we spent a little time downtown in our community where they held Hot Summer Nights on each Friday in the month of August. This evenings theme was Emergency Vehicles and a Patriotic Night! It was a great evening watching the community come together, supporting our local police, firefighters, and emergency responders. There was also a great salute to our armed forces with a balloon release in their honor! It was beautiful! I love small town life!

I am so very excited about this upcoming TPT sale! Just 2 more days!!! I have discounted my entire store by 20 % so with the Sale you can get up to 28 % off. That's an awesome deal! I have lots of items on my wish list! What's on yours ? Click on over to my store and grab some great deals! Let me know what you think!

Thank you so much for stopping by! I would love to hear from you! Blessings to you all!

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Thank you to Doodle Bug for hosting this weekly Linky! I love sharing thoughts and ideas!

This has been an another awesome Summer Week! I want to share the Top 5 things that I must have to start my year off in Kindergarten.

1. Mr. Sketch markers - I absolutely love these markers and use them all the time. My students love the way they smell as I give them smilies throughout the day. I love the bright colors as well. It makes my anchor charts really bright and colorful!

2. Heidi Songs - I ABSOLUTELY love these CD's/ DVD's. Click on the Heidi's Song picture above if you would like to check out more about these amazing songs! Heidi's songs have helped my students so much as we immerse ourselves in sight words with songs, movements and then books/ activities to support and reinforce our learning. My colleague Laura and I have created a Yearly Sight Word Plan and Sight Word books to go with this plan. We use Heidi songs everyday as we challenge our students to learn 105 sight words! It's sounds like a lot of words, but my students are so successful and we have seen their reading grow immensely as they gain that automaticity of their sight words!

Click on the picture to take a look at our yearly sight word plan and then click here to read My Sight Word Blog post about our amazing Yearly Sight Word Plan and Sight Word Books, etc.. to support our students learning. You can also check out our Sight Word Books in my TPT store.

3. Silhouette Cameo - I love to create a very organized, purposeful and yet "pretty" classroom environment. I am often at school more than I am at home so I want it to be some place i enjoy going as well as my students. The Cameo has helped me to create labels, vinyls, and awesome bulletin boards for my classroom.

4. Children's Books! - I absolutely am in love with children's books! My husband thinks that I have a serious problem. I just ordered 3 more books today from Amazon that were recommended by a good friend. Here are my top favorite children's books that we read and use in Writers and Readers Workshop repeatedly all year long, they are a must in my book (pun intended - lol )

Mo Willems (anything)

Chalk by Bill Thomson

Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman

When Sophie Gets Angry..., Really Really Angry... by Molly Bang

A Ball for Daisy

How to Heal A Broken Wing

The Magic Fish

Big Al

The Day the Crayons Quit

I would love to hear about some of your must have Children's Books and how you use them in your classroom!

5. QT White Peach Tea - It's incredible. I have to start every day with an XL cup full! I can't seem to go a day without. On the few that I have had to, I am thinking about it all day until I can find a QT that has it again! It's amazing!

I am mentoring this year, so I will be working in my classroom a lot next week getting ready so that I can be ready to help my new colleague! I hope to have some great pictures for you then! Be sure to stop in and check out Doodle Bugs blog to see what everyone else is up to!

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

I am linking up with Deanna Jump to share some of my favorite books. Personally, I just finished reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn! All I can say is "Oh My"! What an emotional roller coaster.

On to one of my favorite kid books though! I want to share about THE MAGIC FISH by Freya Littledale. This has become one of mine and my kindergarten kiddos favorite books.

This is the story of a fisherman who earns the favor of a magic fish through his own good-heartedness. The fisherman tell his wife of his meeting with the Magic Fish and she demands that he go back and ask the fish to give them a better home than their tiny shack which the fish is happy to do, but his wife is not content with that. The wife then convinces the fisherman to go ask the fish for more and more until she is Queen of the land and wants to be Queen of the Sun and the Stars.

Every time the fisherman goes to ask the fish for something else, the sea is stormier and angrier, although the fish says nothing. In the end, the fish decides that the wife has asked for too much, and so he takes away everything. One of my Kindergarteners last year after reading this book said, " She just needs to learn to be happy and kind. " Absolutely! There are so many great ideas and ways to use this book. First of all, it a great example of a fairytale/ fable and would be a way to learn about common types of text. It is a pretty easy read and has a repetitive pattern so by the end of the year a number of my K kids were reading it for enjoyment. In Readers Workshop, it would be a great book to talk about retelling and learning how to retell the beginning, middle and end. The illustrations are great and really support the story. Also great to use for discussions about problem and solution and character analysis. In Writers Workshop, it would be great for an illustration lesson on using background to tell part of the story (as the fisherman asks for more and more, the fish and the sea get angrier and angrier unit they have had enough) , learning to tell a story across the pages, how to tell a story bit by bit and of course lots of ideas for conventions. I hope that you will come to love this story as much as I do! I am sure there are so many more ways to use this wonderful book. I would love to hear from you about some of your favorite books and how you use them to support your students learning!

Sunday, July 20, 2014

I am so excited to share what I have been working on as well as tell you about my Christmas in July sale on my TPT store!

My TPT store will be having a SALE for the next three days. Everything will be 20% off! Wowza!
Click on the picture to visit my store!

CHRISTMAS IN JULY SALE! 20% OFF

NEW CLASSROOM DECOR

This is one of my favorite times of year as I begin to think and work on ideas for my classroom. This year is even more exciting as I am moving into a new classroom! Please check back for pictures of my classroom as I begin working on it in earnest this coming week. I am so excited as I have started with a new theme. FUNKY SUPER STARS! I have a couple of freebies for you from this classroom set: HERE ARE TWO FREEBIES FOR YOU! Here is a set of Cubby Tags and Desk Plates as well as Classroom Helpers Job Chart Cards. They are so super cute! (if I do say so myself). Just click on the cover pics below!

If you love this set as much as I do, you can click on the link below to go to my TPT store and pick up my Funky Super Stars Classroom Decor set!

You also can check out my Pete the Cat Classroom Decor (2 different backgrounds) or Monster, Monster Oh So Cute Classroom Decor if you are interested! Here are FREEBIE classroom jobs for each of those as well! I just want to thank you for following my blog! I hope you enjoy them! Click on the picture to get yours!

I hope that you are getting excited to start thinking about getting your classroom set up too! It's one of my favorite things! Keep checking back as I'll be posting pics as I work on my room! Click on the side button to follow me on Facebook too!